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Tasty Tip #6

December 4, 2008

Today's Tasty Tip is brought to you by the letter D. Because alliteration is cool.

A Dose of Delightfully Dorm-Laden Demise Anti-Dotes. Damn!

So while my freshmen days have been blocked out by a defense mechanism in my hippocampus, my younger sister is presently embarking on the coming-of-age hallmark of living with among a cornucopia of new adults, many of whom are still learning how to do their laundry.

For all you dormies out there finally getting settled into "life on your own" after what was likely your first trip home for Thanksgiving, here are some tips, straight from the mouth of my next in kin.

  • Super-glue your keys to your hand. Because nothing's worse than running to the bathroom in the middle of the night and getting left in the hallway with no RA in sight, groggy-eyed, confused and naked. Still needing to pee.


  • Make friends with cafeteria staff. Waiting in the sandwich line for 20 extra minutes because you wanted extra mayo just isn't worth it. Learn their names, chat it up as you grab your tray and reap the rewards. Make them little holiday cards, or candy cane reindeer with googley-eyes and pipe-cleaner antlers. Expect cookies with your next mystery meat dinner, trust.


  • Get the inside scoop on RAs. Learning names is one thing. Digging for some dirt is another. Chances are, a third of them are hooking up. And another third has hooked up before. Get the gossip, get on their good side and create some leverage. You never know when you'll need a dorm-rules violation freebie, you rebel, you.


There you go. A dutifully-delivered dollop of dorm advice.

Thanks, sis.

Oh, one more thing. Overuse of the letter D may cause dizziness, dumbness, dread, doubtfulness and/or depression. Use sparingly.


TA, GIA, GTF, WTF?

December 2, 2008

As your head swims in the cumbersome ocean of preposterous acronyms for the "teacher's helpers" who oftentimes decide your grade, let's take a step back and break it down.

TA – Teaching Assistant

ITA – Instructional Teaching Assistant

GIA – Graduate Instructional Assistant

GTF – Graduate Teaching Fellow

GTA – Grand Theft Auto. I mean... Graduate Teaching Aide

GTFMBYTUSMBASC – Get the F out of My Brain, You're Taking Up Space in My Brain's Acronym Storage Capacity

One you've learned the appropriate title for your abbreviated professor, it's in your best interest to find out what kind of leverage they really have.

Most of these professor sidekicks are students, just like you, floating in the abyss between undergraduate-dom and professor-dom. In many cases, they watched the same cartoons you did as a kid, so it's not in your best interest to see them as the enemy. They're getting graded too, so both of your asses are on the line.

Learn their names. Get their e-mail address and ask for advice on the class, the inside scoop on your professor's grading policies. Find out what makes them tick. But don't ask them out on a date. That just gets messy, especially if you start hooking up on the stack of paper's they're supposed to grade for tomorrow.

It all comes down to the same thing. Make college, and all the baggage that comes with it, work for you.


The Hand Turkey: Feasting on Fervor

THANKSGIVING - Thursday, November 27, 2008

They don't teach you enough in college.

Let me ask you something. Why don't we make Hand Turkeys anymore?

Something so basic, so organic, so fundamental to being human. Why aren't there classes on this? Well, I guess art majors, children's ed. majors and um, abnormal psychology majors have room for the Hand Turkey in a quiz somewhere, but for the rest of us, the best lessons are taught hands-on. And that really applies to everything.

By a show of hands (ha! get it?), who here has made a Hand Turkey?

I can't think of anything that defines my young existence more than the Hand Turkey. Other than eating paste, of course.

So for all of you out there going "Yeah, what happened to Hand Turkeys..." here's a little How-To to get you through this holiday without feeling too far removed from the crazy table. I mean, the kid's table.

Okay, listen. The Hand Turkey requires a lot of steps, so read closely and take notes. You wanna stay fresh and limber for classes on Monday.

The Ultimate How-To in Hand Turkeying

Step 1. Get a hand.

Step 2. Get a piece of paper.

Step 3. Get a pen/pencil/marker/finger paint/your mom's lipstick/used turkey baster/etc.

Step 4. (This is the best part!) Trace your freaking hand!

Step 5. Insert triangle beak where your thumb outline is and stick stick legs out of the bottom. Stick stick legs, you heard me.

Intermediary Step: Okay, this is where it gets tricky. Now that you've successfully used one of your body parts to outline the representation of a pre-dismembered turkey, drop everything else. It's time to get creative.

It's turkey time. (I've been waiting to say that for so long.)

You'll need: glue, paint, markers, crayons, pastel chalks, fuzzy stickers, shiny thingies, a little flamboyance and of course, FEATHERS. Preferably from the bird who's sweating balls in the oven. Let's bring it full circle, people.

Now, take a deep breath, and prepare for the final step.

Step 6. Don't actually sniff the glue, but feign some craziness from the fumes of holiday cheer, and let loose the holiday rage early. Grab your materials at random and fling 'em down! Hurl multicolored goodness onto those fingerey feathers! Close your eyes and blindly slap on snippets of flair! Knock some cranberry sauce onto your feathery, glittery, gluey mess, paying homage to the bloody slaughter that must ensue to provide you with such a silently succulent, poultry feast! Flail your limbs, gnash your teeth, and give that hand stamp of yours the panache it needs to enter true, Thanksgiving Turkey-dom.

Whew.

A good swap for awkward Thanksgiving table family drama, right?

Oh, and actually... there are a few more things you'll need.

Some water, an inhaler and maybe an Advil. If you're not passing out from the Tryptophan, you will be after pouring creative juices from the depths of your soul out onto your twisted masterpiece before the turkey baster's even done... um, basting.

I think I just became a vegetarian.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

P.S. Hey, if you actually did this, please, oh please, send me the picture. LisaRau@Yollege.com. Or ooh, post it as your Yollege user pic!


On being thankful

November 25, 2008

I think I mentioned this before, in some sideline, unabashed moment of sappiness in which I referenced "The Secret."

But if you stop and think about it, how much of your life are you thankful for?

No, forget the heaps of homework, mold in your fridge, steaming pile of dirty undergarments taking up the walking space on your floor...

But the little things.

Ice cubes. Windshield wipers. Fingernails. Because if you didn't have them, you couldn't, like, scratch stuff.

The best thing you can do in terms of being thankful is to open your eyes really big, grab onto something and go: "Holy crap, this is GREAT!" Even if it's just about hot shower water. (But if you're in a dorm shower, make sure you're wearing sandals.)

Who should you be thanking?

The universe. Your deity. Ice cube trays. It doesn't matter. Just slap that huge grin on your face, and you're set.

For starters, thank the next person who gives you a really big hug.

Oh, and me. For giving you a bite-sized dose of a column today. :)


Tasty Tip #6

November 25, 2008

Today's Tasty Tip is brought to you by the letter WEE!!!

The first break.

So you're going home for Thanksgiving. Thank the freaking Greek gods. Midterms are in, homework's on hold, and you don't have to breathe in your roommate's musty B.O. for at least a couple more days. Unless you still live with your parents, or something.

For the many freshmen out there, this might be the first trip home since leaving the comfort of your high school hometown.

So what do you do first? Spend some time with the fam? Take the dog for a walk? Go see all your friends as fast as you can to make sure they're all the same?

Whatever you do, here are some tastily trailblazing tidbits of advice for keeping your head in the game.

  • Acquiesce to some of the routine tasks you left when heading off to college. Someone asks you to take out the trash? You best bet is to smile and do it. Avoid a pre-Thanksgiving blowout. There's enough drama surrounding this American holiday.


  • Don't crash high school parties. It makes them look cool. It makes you look... not.


  • Bring your assignments home. I repeat, take your book bag with you. This may not mean that you're actually going to get a significant amount of work done (and you may be in need of a chiropractor after hauling them back and forth), but that little subconscious reminder in the back of your head may help you not get too used to being on vacation.


Winter break is still weeks away. Don't let your overstuffed Turkey distract you from your responsibilities.

Er... happy eating, people.


Working for the future ...of work

November 24, 2008

Wanna hear something scary? Not like, Saw VIII scary, but like, quarter-life crisis scary?

The unemployment rate of college graduates recently surpassed those of high school drop-outs.

Let that swim around in your spongy brain for a moment.

The New York Times was hip to this back in 2004 with this article, if you're interested in reading about your impending doom.

You can check out the gory visuals here.

While this doesn't mean you should head for the nearest dentist's office to scan the waiting room magazines for the Top 10 Careers for 2009 and take a gamble on the one that's easiest to switch your major to, it does mean to take a step back from your college life and assess. Which is almost spelled asses, but isn't.

Do you enjoy what you're studying? Have you taken advantage of internships or jobs related to your major? Has your college experience provided you with hands-on experience, igniting a yearning passion in that specific area, as you remove your mind from the gutter?

Now is the freaking time to figure out how you're going to make this college degree thing work for you, rather than making, er, unemployment checks work for you. If you're not studying something you at least mildly love, chances are, you'll get added to the jobless list because of sheer apathy rather than a dying market.

And it doesn't matter who you are.

Whether you're working a sculpture out of a potter's wheel for your final project or writing 40-page theses for international relations classes, know your industry. If jobs are few and far between, you need the resources now to figure out how to get a toehold when climbing the career fence, post-graduation. I hear ninja shoes are really good with chain-link ones.

It's like what Whoopi busted out in Sister Act II: "If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere..."

Don't tell me you didn't just start humming that at the computer. You just pulled it up on YouTube, didn't you? Favorite that shit, stat!

So how do I "pay attention," you ask? Simple. Follow your dreams!

Just kidding, that's not useful at all. The corny "duh" factor is so high school, gosh.

Bottom line, you've gotta find the avenues that'll lead you out of college and into the comfy seat of job satisfaction/security. Network, research, log your work experience, post your resume online, meet people who have your ideal career. Schmooze, if you dig that style.

But keep your head up. No one's gonna get anywhere in this economy playing ostrich.


Tasty Tip #4

November 20, 2008

Today's Tasty Tip is brought to you by the letter Pee-Yew!

Toilet Turmoil

Sharing a toilet is nasty, but let's face it. It's an initiation ritual into college student-dom.

Whether you're crammed into a crowded res-hall sharing three stalls with 30 other people who have matched your butt-imprint on the community seat, or you share a single-bathroom apartment a roommate who leaves you little, canary-colored drops of love on the seat, there are a couple things you can do to curb the aches and groans of lacking in porcelain wealth.

  • Carry tissues. Or napkins. Or a hankie, if you jive like that. In your pocket, stuffed inside your sock, whatever. Never curse the gods of empty toilet paper spools again. But seriously, throw away that hankie when you're done.


  • Locate all lavatories along your transit path from home to class. Lobbies, campus buildings, friendly liquor stores... Because nothing's worse than scrambling to get ready for school in the morning and running to the toilet before you head out the door only to get slammed with a fate worse than death: occupied. You've gotta bolt, and you've gotta have the toilet route mapped out. Trust.


  • Hand sanitizer is your best friend. Other than me, of course.


Did you know that British people call it the water closet? Like it's this secret, hidden aqua reservoir, ooh... Well I guess it is, if you keep a lid on it.

...Which is what I should do when getting dangerously close to copping out on potty humor. Holy crap.

Hey! You! Go review the crap out of something at your school! Does the food suck? Do the parties get lame before midnight? Are your professors totally hot, but like, married or something? Dish it out!

Find your college here.


Raising the evolutionary bar

November 17, 2008

Living in the wake of the weekend can be a good way to start a Monday, as long as it's launching you forward into the week. If you're still riding a two-day hangover, can't remember who's bed you drooled all over last night and you didn't do your homework, um, well, maybe you learned something. Here, let's plug up those memory gaps.

In my case, I learned some pretty jolting stuff about the oh-so-cool generation surrounding this decade of young people. Generation Y (people who grew up in the 90s and 2000s), are also called Millennials, which makes me think of millionaires, which reminds me of this YouTube vid I saw, since that's like, most college students' main source of information. Bo Burnham, anyone?

So the video, SonyBMG's "Did You Know" whacks you with some hard-hitting facts. Look:

  • The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. (Errr... it's still 2008.)


  • For students starting a 4 year technically degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study. (Holy shit, I'm so glad I majored in Starving Writerdom.)


  • 1 out of 8 couples last year met online. (I'm so disabling my Wall.)


  • Today, the number of text messages send and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet. (At least it's not... pollution?)


So this pretty much means that you could be paying for a degree that'll put you behind people who don't even know what FAFSA stands for yet, are cramming for a final that will become old news by the time you graduate, are engaged in an intensely devoted Poke-war with your future spouse and will have carpal tunnel by the time you're 30 from excessive text messaging, especially from the twisted-hand sneaky texting you do in class or while driving. Damn highway patrol. And teachers. Who run into you on the highway.

And while we can still breathe the sweet nostalgia of our priceless generation, staking a claim on AOL chat, day-glo t-shirts, South Park Season 1 and not really believing in Y2K even though you stocked up on canned food and dehydrated bananas in your garage, it's flying by like a drunken minute man with a sorority girl.

So while us Gen Y-ers are pretty much the most awesome people out there (oh, breathe in the rich scent of pure ageism), we're forever playing a game of catch-up. Not like ketchup, which is pure sugar, but playing keep-up with the exponential present like a mad sugar rush gone bad.

So keep your eyes open and realize that before you're even 30, you may have already dated 5 of your MySpace friends. The ones whose page looks like a schizophrenic html monster threw up all over it.

That's all. Get in the fast lane, or the world's gonna leave you behind. Oh, and use honey as a sugar supplement. It's better for you anyway.

Pillow creases on your face...

November 14, 2008

...as you stumble into your 8:15 a.m. class, rubbing your malleable cheek skin while readjusting your eyes to the overhead fluorescent lights is not the best way to start your day. Especially if you don't have the excuse of a hangover. You're guilty as charged, a classic case of college student profiling: lack of sleep.

But hey, the weekend's here! If you know what's good for you, you'll take these days of freedom to squeeze in those cozy rapid eye movements, hug that pillow/one-night stand and catch up on some much needed bodily/mental rejuvenation. And if you don't know what's good for you, then, um, wear a helmet.

Most college students don't get enough sleep by far, and I hear sleep deprivation is cumulative. It adds up. If you're going on 4 hours a night Mon-Thurs and your body's aching for the nightly 8, you're gonna need... an extra 16 hours over the weekend to not feel like you were hit by a bus the next Monday morning!

But that's a little overambitious unless you have blackout curtains and a mute roommate. Point being, it's okay to sleep the weekend away. In fact, it'll serve you well. Sleep until dinner tomorrow. Um, the new way to diet?

Because walking tired is like walking drunk. You think you're doing great until the people next to you ask why you aren't wearing any shoes.

And if when Monday rolls around, it takes the strong nuclear force just to get you to roll over and hit Snooze, let's hope you set your alarm ten minutes before wake-up time. The back-up cell phone alarm on extra-loud, extra-vibrate, extra-annoying at two-minute intervals for the half hour leading up to your alarm isn't a bad idea either. If your roommate's also deaf, that is.

Whether it's going to sleep earlier during the week, paying the price for sleeping in past class, or dedicating the 4 a.m. – 4 p.m. chunk of your Saturday/Sunday to hide under the covers, do it.

Lack of sleep leads to poor concentration, achy muscles and many, many cases of depression in college students. And hey, you probably won't have many friends if you're in your dorm room for weeks on end in your pajamas living off of a jar of peanut butter. And not having friends can lead to depression. It's a vicious cycle, see?

Have some fun, get some sleep, and then just... get some.

ZZZzzz...


Tasty Tip #3

Thursday – November 13, 2008

Today's Tasty Tip is brought to you by your forearm muscles. From raising your hand... gosh.

Raise your hand!

While it's fun to slump beneath those two-in-one desk chairs and see how many undercover text messages you can sneak in while a droning lecture starts your next REM cycle, you're missing out on all the FUN.

Keep reading, I promise.

As student loans rack up in your future bank account, get your money's worth, throw in some pizzazz and raise your hand! They don't own you. You're buying this experience! Now raise your freaking hand and take some control.

Look at it this way. If you’re the poster child for all things collegiate, you're probably doing this anyway. But if you've been staring at your professors flapping gums for an hour, drooling on your desk, aching for the moment you can breathe in the non-academic air of freedom, you have nowhere to go but up, and not necessarily in your pants. It's a win-win situation.

Let's assign grades to possible comments to consider the next time you're just about ready to use the Joker pencil trick on someone. Or the next time you're just spacing out... that's more likely.

  • A+ "Oh, I agree. The cultural tensions that arose from the once-silenced echelons of society WAS indicative of new movements in art and literature at the time!" Just say this in your microbiology class, I swear. It'll be great.


  • B+ "Could you please repeat that? [hold pen in anticipation over notebook]" (The stage direction is particularly important here.) If you're just not buying it or truly don't understand the material, you just earned yourself a likely B+ or higher on the next exam, plus kudos from the prof.


  • C+ "What page are we on?" That'll kill a few minutes. Especially if you ask again.


  • D+ "Oh [insert pensive look], I forgot my question. Please continue. [insert eager, attentive look]" You might just get the feigned buzz of swelling of brain cells for trying really hard to look engaged. And hey, maybe it'll be worth it! Extra kudos for encouraging the class to continue, as if that were your first prerogative.


  • F... for fun! "Isn't it hypocritical for us to be discussing this subject matter so rigidly when the classroom limits our understanding of tactile relationships with the outside world, deprives us of hands-on experience with the material in our books and merely imitates first-hand accounts of what we're talking about in the first place?" Whether you're a genuine freethinker, button-pusher or general lamebrain collegiate sucker for class clowning, you've just earned yourself a spot in the class.

Either way, professors get all fuzzy inside on class participation. The more times you show your face and call attention to any inkling that "Yes, I'm present. Yes, I'm paying attention to something," the more they'll remember your name when entering grades at the end of the semester. And hey, maybe you'll LEARN something. Yeah?

If you don't show, you're not gonna get much. Even if you raise your hand from your bed. To shut off the alarm, gosh.

You've been p0wn3d... by the Internet

Wednesday - November 12, 2008

Let's be honest.

How much time do you spend tagging photos? Checking AIM away message updates? Mindless Facebook stalking? ("It's not stalking, everybody does it, gosh.")

The real question is no longer who are you? but who are you on the Internet? And more importantly, how much of that can you not blame on crappy professors? Damnit, I know.

This decade's generation of college students is no longer defined by how many people you can high-five on campus, but by how many people on campus have seen your most embarrassing tagged photo on Facebook. ("Untag, untag!")

Is there a gap between what people see in 3-D and what they see at 2 a.m. on their computer screens over a box of Cheez-its? Employers like Cheez-its too. Especially the on-campus ones.

If you're reading this column, you likely have more of a revealing public identity on the Web than you bargained for, whether you like it or not. ("Shit, maybe I should take down that AOL Hometown page I dedicated to Céline Dion. Oh wait, they shut down their server anyway. Jerks.)

Let's ponder for a moment over the World Wide Web's proud p0wn3rship of your identity.

After a quick, routine name search on virtually any search engine, who are you? Are you sitting with your arms crossed in your lap in front of a Victorian-looking building with a Glee-club t-shirt? Or are you pounding Fat Tire from a fish tank hose in your underwear? Or do you oscillate between the two to come off as well-rounded? Studious, yet cool? Ahem.

Private profiles can conceal lamebrain wall comments from one-night stands when you're not there to monitor, sure, but your user pic doesn't need to tell a thousand words. A momentary 2-D snapshot is enough to typecast you from the list of stereotypes we keep at the forefront of our brains. (Given the structure of this post, I should insert a list of quoted stereotypes here, but really, "I don't judge people. That's so high school.")

The lightning speed of a click makes judgments come all the more quickly, and Google owns it. Facebook probably owns your reputation. And MySpace owns the power to proclaim to the world the last time you logged on. ("I don't even use MySpace that much anymore. I let my little sister log on to my account, yeah, that's it.")

Even if you're not trying to market yourself with a Web identity to appease a prospective hook-up or employer (or both... if you're into that kind of thing), your sweet old grandma may be pulling up drunk-ass photos of you on the toilet before you've even updated your status for the day. ("Grandma, didn't you know? It's backwards day! It makes sense, trust me!")

But hey, if you're okay with public debauchery and general inappropriateness attached to your hyperlinked name, more power to you! You may be marketing yourself toward a spot on the next season of Flavor Flav's Rock of Hyper-Surreally-Sexualized Foam Party Lovefest Season 9, and I hear they pay well. In gold teeth.

Do what you want with your online self. Just know what you're doing, how you're doing it, and who's wanting to do you in the process.

So unless you're gonna pull a Ted Kaczynski and plan to put your college degree toward a shack in the woods with lots of stamps, you've been p0wn3d by the Internet. Beware.

Tasty Tip #2

Tuesday - November 11, 2008

Today's Tasty Tip is brought to you by the letter 'Oh yeah, I should get a job.'

"The On-Campus Job"

Banging your head against the walls of a job that doesn't care if you have midterms during the middle of a shift? Painfully procrastinating that whole "get a job while you're in college" plan in general, perhaps? Or are you just broke as... Freddie Mac? Wait...

Well. Here's a tantalizing triad of tasty reasons why you should get a job on campus:

  • It's CLOSE. To your CLASSES. And probably to your ROOM. Pajamas are coming back into style, you know.


  • Bosses who can actually give you a flexible schedule. They may even let you pick your hours, considering you're a lowly, humble, hard-working student. Mhm.


  • On-campus jobs are easy to find. I repeat: EASY TO FIND. Go to your school's homepage, find the career center or whatever, and start e-mailing out your resume. A simple "Hi, my name is Fannie. What positions are you offering?" is better than nothing.

And hey, depending where you work (the student center, administration building, financial aid office, student health center, human resources, alumni relations, maintenance department, mail services, major department office, the list goes on... seriously), you'll have an instant "in" to whatever's going on behind the scenes of that wholesome campus of yours.

Make yourself at home, because you've dedicated a good chunk of your young adulthood to this school anyway. Now go make it cushy. Like a Tempur-Pedic bed lining your pockets, yeah...

A case of the Mondays

Monday - November 10, 2008

Yeah, a whole trunkful.

Give yourself a hard slap in the face. It's Monday.

If you've already eaten breakfast, made it to class on time and have no dirt behind your ears, stop reading this. You're fine.

For the rest of us who grasp at the disappearing strands of the weekend as the looming dawn of Mon-doom descends upon us, please continue.

Doing "the college thing" boils down to doing "the schedule thing." It's a lot like doing "the real life thing," but you're not getting paid. So when that peppy flair-monger of an RA asks if you're having a case of the Mondays, you want to punch her/him twice as hard. And then you remember how much you loathe gendered pronouns.

But when you've treated Sunday like an all day rager and are absolutely not going to make it into class/work/down the hall to the bathroom today, I suggest making yourself at least somewhat useful. I've got it.

Let's make a To-Do list!!!

Um. No?

Okay fine. Let's make a list of things to be thankful for on this young November day:

1. Two weeks and two days until Thanksgiving break! Woo-hoo!

2. Whether you aced or bombed your midterm, your grade is pretty much decided at this point, so there's not too much you can do about it anyway! Woo-hoo!

3. Pumpkin Spice lattes are back at Starbucks! Woo-hoo!

4.The phrase "Woo-hoo!" just came back in style! Woo-freakin'-hoo!

So.

If you've seen that über-corny, sugar-coated yet wholly encouraging film "The Secret," you know that making yourself feel all nice inside about things is a good way to keep 'em coming.

Happy about a good grade on your term paper? You'll probably channel that excitement into another good grade. Thankful for an open washing machine, finally? You're probably more inclined to lend someone a quarter to divert them from air-drying their underwear in a musty dorm room. Grateful for alarm clocks? Um... you'll probably wake up tomorrow!

So you see, being thankful is one of the most useful things you can do. Turn that Monday frown upside down!

Okay, there's sap in my ears. And Microsoft Word doesn't have a limit on exclamation marks. Just... just go! Go be thankful that the semester's almost over. You're that much smarter now about which classes to pick for the spring.

Woo-hoo!


Food, comforting you to the max

Friday - November 7, 2008

Let's talk food.

If you're like most college students, you've perfected the art of the Ramen noodle, can make macaroni and cheese in the drinking fountain and really believe that fruit snacks suffice your need for Vitamin C.

But the oh-so-coveted college staple foods can get stale and not just from leaving the bag open. I mean, who really buys chip clips anyway.

While some of you may be lucky enough to have a mean plan, the rest of us are familiar with late night pantry rummaging, bargaining with yourself over milk carton expiration dates and pacing in front of the fridge until all the Chinese take-out places have stopped delivering, forcing you to jump on the computer to find 24-hour pizza delivery. You know you've Googled "24-hour delivery." Don't lie.

If your stomach rumbled at least once during the past few sentences, consider the following easy options the next time you hit the grocery store to save the pain of going hungry in your own kitchen. And do you wanna know why it rumbles? Because your intestines are beginning to digest the lining of your stomach for FOOD! Nom nom nom nom...

Okay, step one. Go to the grocery store. After picking up the three critical Cs (cereal, chips, Cheez-its), proceed.

Just-add-water soup bowls!

You'd be surprised at how many easier-than-Ramen, food-filled soup options you have. Almost every convenience store (and some vending machines) sells hidden, soupy gems of nutrition to add some variety to your bland water-noodle diet. The Annie Chung brand comes in a recyclable bowl, so you'll be well-fed, green-minded, and warm and fuzzy inside. (English majors, this is the only acceptable use of the serial comma, FYI.)

Frozen stir-fry/pot stickers/chicken combos

While Cheez-its can curb almost any kind of hunger, you can prevent your intestines from turning orange by convincing yourself that you're really cooking. And you can mix and match! Broccoli and chicken? Right on! Bell peppers and beef? Definitely! Succotash shrimp with peas? ...Sure!

Okay so here's what you'll need. A stove (or an illegal fire pit in your dorm room), a pan with cooking oil, and hands strong enough to rip open the bag and dump the frost-bitten clumps onto a sizzling plate of home-cooked deliciousness, the aroma of the Food Network at primetime wafting through the musty air. Shhh... just tell yourself you made it from scratch.

Sandwich meat

Because if you make yourself buy sandwich meat at the store, you're then gonna tell yourself that you need some bread, and then you're gonna look at the bread and be like, "Hey, we don't have any mayo!" And wa-la! Sandwichville in your fridge! If you don't eat meat, grab some Tofurkey and eggplant slices and get creative. Wait, you probably already are.

Protein powder packets

Do you have a water bottle? Do you know how to shake it? Enough said.

While mac 'n' cheese in a cup of lukewarm water may hold you over for a while, be aware of the many easy options at your fingertips as you go through that hectic, busy life of yours.

Because when you run out of food, you're gonna be tempted to eat out. All the time. And that's expensive, especially when you have to blow your paycheck on a gallon of bleach to save your fridge from when the unmarked, take-out container of doom three months down the road starts to take over. Um, see previous posts for more details.

And seriously, don't watch the Food Network. Those succulent Swiss meatballs, perfectly sliced wedges of homemade brie and juicy melonballs will make you depressed, and licking the screen doesn't help matters much. Trust.


Tasty Tip #1

Thursday - November 6, 2008

Today's Tasty Tip is brought to you by the letter A+

DEADLINES

You know they're coming. Like getting pulled over for running three red lights or falling into a really big hole, there's no getting out of it. Unless you're a Fembot, or something.

Part of a bi-weekly feature regarding tenaciously tasty tidbits of advice, here's a nice, little bullet-pointed list to help get your work in on time.

  • Write your assignment deadline in HUGE, BLOCK LETTERS on a HUGE PIECE OF PAPER and hang it on your mirror. Where your face goes.

  • Even if you're not going to start working on it until the butt-crack of dawn the morning of, take the split second to put the assignment on your desk and just name the Word doc., even if it's blank.

  • Set cell phone alarms at 12-hour intervals three days before deadline with inspirational messages: "Midterm!"; "You're gonna ace it!"; and "Do your shit asshole!" I, um, swear I've never done this.

There you go!

Give it a shot. Because if you turn in your shit late, most professors will crap all over whatever good work you did by lowering your grade, never giving you the benefit of the doubt and calling on you in class during the middle of a very important text message. And teachers talk to each other. They even... :gasp: hang out! So the next professor you have in that department just might smell you from a mile away, and you won't even know it.

To sum? Nobody likes a lazy ass. Work it out, bum!

Questions, comments, concerns? Have a suggestion for a column?

Let me know:

LisaRau@Yollege.com

Learn more about me here.